Wayne Wright is the founder of one of the largest personal injury law firms in Texas with offices in San Antonio, Corpus Christi, El Paso, Austin and Houston. Mr. Wright is well-known as a philanthropist whose dedication to the community includes a focus on the needs of military service members.

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Military suicide rate surges again

Our soldiers have an enemy no one expected – suicide. We learned from CNN last week that 38 soldiers killed themselves in July. The number is a record breaker. It’s also a heartbreaker for their families, their comrades-in-arms and all Americans.
This year, 154 soldiers killed themselves in 155 days. The Associated Press said the rate was “50 percent higher than the number of troops killed in action in Afghanistan” over the same period of time. Last month, TIME Magazine’s cover featured the full-page silhouette of a soldier playing taps under a headline that read “ONE A DAY.”
One a year is too many. History teaches us that soldiers die from enemy fire, not by their own hands. So the suicide rate leaves us at a loss. That includes the nation’s top brass and the Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta.
He voiced his frustration in the Washington Post last month, calling the suicide rate “troubling and tragic.” He didn’t stop there. He put the military on notice at a Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs conference on suicide prevention in June in Washington. He told attendees “….there is no damn reason for not finding the answer……”
No one has answers. All we know is what we keep hearing from the media: that the number of military suicides is unprecedented. Last month, TIME Magazine reported that more soldiers are committing suicide than are dying on the battlefield. Nearly a third had never deployed. The stories hit us like bullets. There has to be an answer.
Panetta has ordered the military to put its concern for “mental fitness” on an equal par with its concern for “physical fitness.” According to the Washington Post, Panetta has ordered “a service-wide review of mental health diagnoses.” And he wants “game changing” innovation “in research on areas related to suicide prevention, including post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury.”
It can’t come too soon, my friends. It can’t come too soon.